Early Career
After leaving Parsons, Sui learned by designing for sportswear labels and doing styling on the photography shoots of her friend Steven Meisel. During this time, she began designing and making clothes out of her apartment. While working for the sportswear company Glenora, she brought her collection of five pieces to a New York trade fair, and caught the attention of a couple New York department stores. A few weeks later, those clothes were featured in a New York Times advertisement. The manager at Glenora, where Sui was on the payroll, was furious when he saw the advertisement in the Times and fired her on the spot.
Left without a job, Sui took her $300 in savings and started a business out of a little corner in her apartment's living room. For several years, Sui ran the company out of her apartment, doing odd-jobs for spare income and reinvesting every penny of earnings into her business. The 1980s was the height of “power-dressing” companies such as Chanel, Lacroix and Versace and Sui struggled to stand up next to the big-name fashion houses. In 1991, Sui's friends Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista got together and encouraged her to try a runway show. Sui rented a small space in the meatpacking district and paid the models by giving them the clothes. The successful show was the biggest breakthrough of Sui's career. "That those beauties (Campbell and Evangelista) were then at the height of their fame helped stoke the reception Sui got from buyers and the news media."
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